Germany wants migrants sent back to Greece and Turkey

Germany called yesterday (2 October) for asylum seekers who entered the European Union via Greece to be forced to return there, while also urging Athens to send more migrants back to Turkey.

In an interview with a Greek daily, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said he wants to reinstate EU rules which oblige asylum seekers to be sent back to Greece as the first EU country they reached.

“I would like the Dublin convention to be applied again… we will take up discussions on this in a meeting with (EU) interior ministers” later in October, he told the Greek daily Kathimerini.

The Dublin accord gives responsibility for asylum seekers’ application to the first country they reach – which put Greece on the frontline of more than a million migrants who arrived in the EU last year.

The accord also says asylum seekers should be sent back to the first country they arrived in if they subsequently reach another EU state before their case is examined.

Germany suspended the Dublin agreement in August 2016 which unleashed a mass exodus of migrants to Europe, a huge proportion of them ending up in Germany.

The number of refugees to arrive in Germany in 2015 exceeded the 1 million prediction that was made in the midst of the crisis. EURACTIV Germany reports.

But this clause was suspended for Greece in 2011 after the country lost an EU legal complaint which condemned the mistreatment of migrants seeking international protection. The Commission now accepts that migrants be sent back to Greece.

Asked to comment on reports that Germany is considering sending back migrants to Greece, the Commission saw no contradiction with its own plan that migrants in Greece should be relocated to other countries of the Union.

“Since then, the EU has provided substantial support, not only financially,” to Greece to improve its asylum seeker procedures, the German minister said.

‘Greece must expel more’

In an interview on German television Sunday evening, De Maizière also criticised Athens for failing to fully implement an EU agreement with Turkey to return migrants there.

The European asylum support office EASO expressed concern over the slow registration of asylum seekers in Greece, which is a necessary precondition for the refugees relocation to other member states.

The EU reached a deal with Turkey in March to stop the influx to the Greek islands in return for financial aid and eased visa conditions for its citizens. But the deal has looked shaky in the wake of a coup attempt in Turkey in July.

“Greece must carry out more expulsions,” he told the ARD television station.

De Maizière had already in August highlighted the need to reinstate the Dublin rules, provoking an outcry from Athens.

Greece stressed it was already coping with over 60,000 refugees and migrants blocked on its territory after countries further north on the so-called Balkan route closed their borders to the massive influx, notably fleeing the Syrian conflict.

Uncertainty is rife among refugees on Greek soil as no one has told them what will happen next or how to proceed. Germany’s interior minister has offered help to Athens, but downplayed the seriousness of their situation. EURACTIV’s partner Tagesspiegel reports.

De Maizière said he was conscious of the “strong reactions” of Greeks, as well as the huge number of migrants being dealt with by Greece as an EU frontline state.

But “that doesn’t annul the need” to reinstate the Dublin rules, he said, stressing that “criticism of the convention not being applied keeps increasing in Germany.”

The German minister, who has just revised the number of asylum seekers who arrived in Germany last year to 890,000 – down from a previous estimate of 1.1 million – reiterated Berlin’s commitment to taking its share of refugees who arrived in Greece and Italy in 2015 and the start of 2016.

“Germany is ready to welcome up to 500 people per month” from the two countries, he said.